Across The River A Forbidden Faith: One South Korean’s Mission To Reach The North
GIMPO, South Korea — North Korea is right there.
Standing on the observation deck at Aegibong Peace Ecopark, holding cups of coffee from the brand new Starbucks behind them, visitors gaze across the Han River to the rolling hills of the world’s most isolated, enigmatic and repressive state.
Through digital binoculars they peer into North Korea’s “Peace Village,” a set of nondescript, multilevel buildings. There, a woman beats sheaves of rice on a stone threshing floor. A man in gray work clothes rides a bike past monuments to the North’s deceased leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
“Propaganda Village,” South Koreans call it.
The South Korean military started allowing visitors here only recently, says Sang Yang, who preaches for Churches of Christ in the capital, Seoul, and across the nation of 52 million. His parents fled from the North during the Korean War, a brutal conflict that claimed 2.5 million lives between 1950 and 1953. He grew up in the countryside and came to Seoul at age 16 with the equivalent of $5 in his pocket. He got a job ironing shirts at a laundromat in the city’s business district, Gangnam, and slept under a table there at night.
By the light of a kerosene lamp, Yang studied lessons from the Bible Correspondence Center, or BCC, a ministry of Churches of Christ. Bill Ramsay, an American who served in the Korean War as an Air Force radio mechanic, launched the center in 1964. Yang was student No. 61,873.
Ramsay baptized him in a bathtub.
Now Yang, 66, directs the BCC, which includes in-person and online ministry courses. The center occupies a four-story building in the heart of Seoul, which also serves as the meeting place for a small Church of Christ.
For Yang, Aegibong is more than a tourist attraction. Looking across the river, he repeats words he’s said many times. “My relatives are right there. And I don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”
The park takes its name from the legend of Aegi, a woman in the 17th century who was deeply in love with the governor of North Korea’s Pyongan Province. When China’s Qing dynasty invaded, the governor sent Aegi south and told her to wait for him on an isolated mountain peak. She waited there until her death, and asked to be buried facing her lost love in the north.
Like Aegi, Yang yearns to be reunited with his family in North Korea. More than that, he wants to bring the Good News he found in Seoul to the people of the North, whose government severely restricts Christianity. All that stands in his way is the Korean Demilitarized Zone, 160 miles of razor wire and barricades.
But Yang has a workaround. With a wry smile, he leans close and says, almost in a whisper, “I sneak into North Korea every night.”
The Waterproof Gospel
About an hour south of the sparsely populated Peace Village, the city of Seoul stands as a juggernaut of steel and glass. Billboards flash with ads for Samsung, LG, Hyundai and other multinational corporations, a testament to South Korea’s breakneck development.
Christianity thrives here, too, as testified to by the neon crosses that glow on the sides of skyscrapers. The Yoido Full Gospel Church, one of the world’s largest congregations, has an estimated 1 million members.
A recent directory lists about 500 Churches of Christ in South Korea with a combined membership between 15,000 and 20,000. “However,” Yang says, “this is what we are saying based on the names written on the church signboards. Only God knows how many churches and people there are who truly practice according to the Bible as the Lord’s church.”
The number of Christians in North Korea is far more difficult to estimate. North Korea’s ruling ideology “treats religion as an existential threat,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “resulting in the severe persecution of Christians … with punishments including forced labor, imprisonment, torture and execution.”
An estimated 400,000 to 900,000 North Koreans escaped to the South during the war, and about 43,000 more have defected since the armistice of 1953 that established the 160-mile DMZ. Neither side signed a peace treaty, so the two Koreas technically are still at war.
Roh Myung-kwan left North Korea during the war years, just like Yang’s parents, and studied at the Bible Correspondence Center. After his baptism, Roh prayed fervently for peace, that the suffering souls in his homeland would find relief — and Jesus.
He and Sang devised the “Waterproof Gospel” project in the early 2010s. Roh financed the printing of 1.2 million copies of the Gospel of Matthew, in Korean, on single, waterproof pages. Church members tied the pages to balloons and checked weather patterns. Whenever the wind blew from south to north, they gathered near the DMZ and released the balloons, with quiet cries of “Hallelujah.”
In 2023, Yang shifted to a newer technology — albeit one that is still more than 100 years old. The minister produces a 60-minute program that travels into North Korea through shortwave radio. Yang partners with World Christian Broadcasting, a ministry launched by Churches of Christ in 1977, to produce the program. Through its transmitter in Anchor Point, Alaska — KNLS (New Life Station) — the ministry sends shortwave broadcasts around the globe in languages including Russian, Chinese and Korean. A second transmitter in Madagascar broadcasts in Arabic, Portuguese and more.
The Korean program includes a cappella worship, Scripture reading and brief devotional messages. Many North Koreans have access to shortwave receivers, which the government uses to send its propaganda programs. Hopefully, Yang says, the people of the North hear the Gospel, too.
Is anybody listening?
“Give me a hint, O Lord. If there are people in North Korea listening, would you give me a hint so that I would not be weary?”
Yang finds himself praying those words a lot. He’s talked with authorities who assure him that his broadcasts are getting through.
“We have received feedback from many countries … from Russia and China, and we have received emails of thanks from Japan, Pakistan, the United States, India and even Ukraine, which is at war.”
Nothing yet from North Korea.
But Yang sees small signs of hope. Before the 2000s, most refugees from North Korea said they had never seen a Bible. Recent studies show that about 8 percent of defectors say they have personally seen or come into contact with a Bible while in the North.
Roh Myung-kwan died in 2021, two years before the Korean broadcasts began. Yang remembers their last conversation, when Roh said, “It seems my days here are not long. I want you to know how happy I am to have met you and studied the Bible.”
After visiting the Aegibong observation deck, Yang drives to Roh’s grave in Donghwa Gyeongmo Park near the town of Paju. There, a cemetery is the final resting place for hundreds of North Koreans separated from their families. Each is buried in a section named after their home province in North Korea. The graves all face the North, just like Aegi’s. In the distance stands a tall pole topped with a cross, lit at night so it can be seen from across the DMZ.
Roh is buried next to his wife. On his tombstone, written in Korean, is Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
“Yes, he was a peacemaker,” Yang says, “and I miss him.”
This article was originally published in The Christian Chronicle.
Erik Tryggestad is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.